Friday, August 11. 2017

In 480 BC Persians under Xerxes defeated Spartans under King Leonidas in the Battle of Thermopylae; the Spartans fought to the last man. In 1909 the SOS distress signal was first used by an American ship, the Arapahoe, off Cape Hatteras, NC. In 1929 Babe Ruth became the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in a career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, OH. In 1942 Vichy government official Pierre Laval publicly declared that "the hour of liberation for France is the hour when Germany wins the war." In 1962 the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev on a 94-hour flight. In 1965 rioting and looting that claimed 34 lives broke out in the predominantly black Watts section of Los Angeles. In 1984 President Reagan joked during a voice test for a paid political radio address that he had "signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." In 1987 Alan Greenspan became Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve. In 1992 the Mall of America, the biggest US shopping mall, opened in Bloomington, MN. In 1995 President Clinton banned all US nuclear tests, calling his decision "the right step as we continue pulling back from the nuclear precipice." In 1997 President Clinton made the first use of the historic line-item veto approved by Congress, rejecting three items in spending and tax bills. (However, the Supreme Court later struck down the line-item veto as unconstitutional.) In 2012 presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney announced that he had chosen Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to be the vice president on his ticket.